On the road with my family: Part 1
When I was a kid in primary school, I read one of those textbooks we used for English lessons. This wasn't one of the regular ones.
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Thinking back, I believe strongly that my sister Georgina might have brought it from Nigeria where she lived and taught for many years in the 80s.
Such textbooks had passages per chapter, which we were supposed to read and then answer questions on the stories. ‘Comprehension’, we called it then.
One of the passages made an impression on me. A father took his wife and children in his car on a journey across his country, going from town to town, visiting interesting sites and teaching his children the history behind those towns and sites.
They spent the night in selected towns and hotels. A bit like the novel, 'Around the World in Eighty Days' by French writer, Jules Verne; this time, the tour was within a country, Nigeria I think.
Way back when I read that passage, I determined that I would do that with my family one day. I will come back to this story and what happened to this aspiration later in this article.
When I was with Unilever, I visited Cote d'Ivôire once for a meeting. In conversations with the Personal Assistant (PA) to the Supply Chain Director, she mentioned that she was starting her leave the next day after we arrived.
There were a few issues we needed help on and we asked whether we could call her while she was on leave or if she could do us a favour and pass by the office to sort us out.
'I am sorry,' she replied, 'I am travelling to France.'
When I realised that not a few of my colleagues and friends in Lagos travelled to either UK or the States for their vacations, I remarked to a pal how different Ghanaians were among these three West African states with respect to how we spend our leave.
Perhaps the trend where people travel abroad for vacation is going up and I may be an odd one out as it doesn't feature in my desires but the main point is that most of my friends spend their leave in Accra or Tema. And time spent with the children revolves around visiting the Accra Mall. The best one does out of the ordinary is to visit the village - for a weekend.
For the first time since I started my working life, I decided to take a leave beyond 15 working days to spend some quality time with the family. And I latched on to my childhood desire to show my children a bit of Ghana on an excursion and not to leave it to the schools to do on my behalf.
It is not as if the children haven't traversed the country; fortunately some of us are from 'faraway' so they have had the opportunity to go to the village a few times, but usually the journey is focused on reaching the destination.
With the help of my friend, the CNN award-winning tourism and culture writer, Kofi Akpabli, and Kwaku Passah Snr, Chief Executive Officer of Galaxy Tours, we designed a tour of a part of the Volta Region to cover two days, with a sleepover at Hohoe.
Kwaku warned that if I wanted the best of it, two nights would be ideal. But we work with the real world, not so? Half a loaf is better 'than no bread'.
The plan was as follows, as advised by Kwaku:
DAY 1: Tema - Atimpoku - Ho - Vane - Tafi - Hohoe - Wli
7.00am: Depart Tema for Atimpoku where you may permit family to walk across Adomi bridge. Continue to Ho. Use the Ho - Dzolokpuita - Vane road to join the main Accra Hohoe trunk road.
Continue to Hohoe and Wli. Visit the waterfalls before you check-in at Wli Water Heights Hotel.
DAY 2: Wli - Hohoe - Tafi – Accra
Depart Wli for Tafi - Atome monkey sanctuary. Continue to Accra.
Kofi had suggested a slight addition or change: that we had lunch at Ho and slept over rather at Hohoe. To book accommodation, I asked my friend Nii Aryee of Unilever who linked me up with a sales colleague in Hohoe, who booked Granslodge for us.
As for my children, they are the epitome of impatience when you want to take them out. So the strategy Vivian and I use is to tell them of such plans a few hours before time!
When we told them we were going on an excursion the night before the travel, they started packing, each of them using a school bag! We had to talk and talk before they agreed not to pack their entire wardrobe.
The excitement reached fever pitch when we informed them that we were going with two of their friends, children of our close family friends.
Day 1: Quite early on the day of travel, the children were up and needed no prodding to take their bath, and breakfast and to get ready. By 9 a.m., we were off and passed through Dawhenya to pick their friends. We then connected from the Aflao road to the Afienya road via Mitchell Camp and turned towards Akosombo.
Our first port of call was the Shai Hills Forest Reserve where the forest guard spent a few minutes telling us about the history of the area. He then indicated that a tour would take a couple of hours and it was best to do it early in the morning or in the evening.
We thanked him and promised to come back later - the focus was on the Volta Region for the two days.
Just in front of the forest reserve, we sighted the baboons. Some of females had babies who were being carried under their bellies.
The red bum of the baboons was the main talking point among the kids. They agreed that the baboons were nice but their bums were not!
• To be continued